In 2016, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove statues of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson that were erected in the 1920s. (It was this vote that the notorious 2017 Unite the Right rally was protesting.) A group called the Monument Fund sued to have the vote reversed, arguing that Virginia law forbids cities to remove war memorials; the city maintains the statues are, in effect, monuments to white supremacy. The state judge wrote in his ruling, “the statues to [Lee and Jackson] under the undisputed facts of this case still are monuments and memorials to them, as veterans of the Civil War. … It does no good pretending they are something other than what they actually are.” – The Daily Progress (Charlottesville)